Gem Spa was a newspaper stand and candy store located on the corner of St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It opened under another name in the 1920s, and was renamed in 1957. It was open 24 hours a day, and was known for being commonly considered to be the birthplace of the authentic New York City-style egg cream, which its awning described as "New York's Best." Often referred to as a bodega, in the 1950s, Gem Spa was a gathering place for beats, and in the 1960s it was a hippie hangout, known for selling a wide selection of underground newspapers. New York Magazine named it the best newsstand in the East Village in 2001. On May 7, 2020, owner Parul Patel announced that the physical store would not re-open due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and rent increases, despite community efforts and a social media campaign to keep it open. The building in which Gem Spa was located, 131 Second Avenue, or 36 St. Marks Place, was built in 1898-1900 and was designed by Louis F. Heinecke in the Renaissance Revival style. It is located within the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District, which was created in October 2012. History The site was an outlet for the Chain Shirt Shop in 1922, and "Gem's Spa" had opened by the 1950s. Sociologist Daniel Bell, who claimed in the 1970s that his uncle Hymie created the egg cream, says that another man called Hymie owned a candy store serving egg creams on the site of Gem Spa in the 1920s. Village Voice reported in the 1970s that people remembered going to the store before World War I. For thirty years up until 1957 the store was owned by the Goldfeder family. From 1957 until at least 1969 the store was owned by Ruby Silverstein and Harold Shepard, who employed 11 staff to keep it open 24 hours a day - Silverstein estimated that every 30 seconds someone walked in the store. The clientele initially mainly bought Jewish and foreign-language papers, which began to change around 1963 as they sold more copies of the Village Voice and underground magazines. Silverstein and Shepard gave the store its current name, initially Gem's Spa - the name came from Gladys, Etta, and Miriam, the names of the wives of Silverstein and Shepard